fit of jealousy over a third woman. Van Waters subsequently labeled some inmates as "hard core" and asked to have them transferred to other prisons. During this era, when accusations about homosexuality were often paired with those about communism, Van Waters became close friends with Helen Bryan, who had been the executive secretary of the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee (JAFRC). Bryan had served time in prison for contempt of Congress after refusing to give the House Un-American Activities Committee a list of JAFRC members and the refugees from Francisco Franco's Spain that they had helped resettle in the United States. After Van Waters found Bryan a temporary job at the reformatory, anti-communist rhetoric aimed at Bryan induced her to resign and led to a hunt for communists at Framingham. An informant for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, after seeing terms of endearment in communications between Van Waters and Bryan, asserted that they were lesbians. The conservative resistance to Van Waters and her methods continued throughout the McCarthy era and culminated shortly after Van Waters' retirement in 1957 with new rules that emphasized discipline, forbade fraternization between staff and inmates, and eliminated the program that allowed mothers and young babies to stay together at the reformatory. Roughly coinciding with these difficulties at the prison were personal losses for Van Waters', including a decline in health. Her mother had died in 1948, and in 1953 her daughter was killed in an automobile crash. In her diaries from the mid-1950s, Van Waters mentioned bouts of viral pneumonia and pleurisy. In 1956, she fell and bruised her head, and later that year she suffered a brain aneurysm that led to surgery and a long recuperation. About 500 people attended her retirement dinner, held in 1957 at the Harvard Club, after which her successor, Betty Cole Smith, became superintendent at Framingham. Retirement, death, and legacy During the early years of her retirement, Van Waters moved into a three-bedroom apartment with two former inmates and staff members, Alice May and Irene Jenner, from the reformatory. Working mostly from home via correspondence and letters to the editor, she supported prison reform, civil rights, and the abolition of the death penalty. She joined the Society of the Companions of the Holy Cross, an organization of Episcopalian women that promoted social justice, and she served as president of the local branch of the Muscular Dystrophy Association. In 1964, after